Plain Vmware image setup - anyone?

[BobbyMac99]

I don't think that using a vmware image is an easy solution for your problem.

With virtualization you need the virtualization system to support having full access to your hardware (in this case the dedicated graphics cards). In this case it's called something like PCI passthrough.
Even though vmware officially supports PCI passthrough such that your guest operating system can use the GPUs, the list of officially supported graphics cards is very small (e.g. for Nvidia only some Tesla and Grid GPUs are officially supported).

Maybe it works, maybe not. But why would you even think about this additional complication.

My suggestion is that you should fix the problem on it's root and not introduce additional problems: maybe the only way is to sell your current custom design GPU and get a founders edition GPU.
Actually, I'm not totally sure if it is the only possible solution, since I know that there are (unfortunately) many more users that use a "gaming" GPU (not-founders-edition) and besides the problems with heat etc they run hashcat without problem.
Unfortuntely, we do not have a list of cards that work or do not work (because we strongly suggest to buy founders edition/reference design GPUs where the vendor doesn't really matter because they are basically all the same and just work out of the box).

From the past we know that some vendors mess around with the firmware that is used on the GPUs, they basically just ship new hardware with adapted older firmwares, which most of the times work (because tested more carefully) with games, but somehow they do not work very well with OpenCL computation tasks. It could be the case for this specific model you have. I do not know for sure.
You can only figure this out if you get a different card (and I highly recommend that you get a founders edition and not a OEM card anymore).

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Thanks for the reply.  Yes, I have spoken to multiple People about OEM/Reference cards.  As you say - there doesn't seem to be a list of them.  But I made the mistake of buying the card, and it did work using hashcat on the first one I had (which died a week later).  A lot of money to spend after the horse is out of the barn, and since I can't get a refund - selling is a choice, I would take a large hit I'm guessing IF I could find a buyer.

#1 - I have thought about re-flashing the BIOS on it, that took me down another road, but I was afraid I would brick the thing.

#2 - Was going to try and compile the Hashcat source under windows, which of course is another road, installing MinGW for windows or Msys64 and convert the makefile - just to try and narrow the type of call to the GPU with some debug statements, which might point me to the problem.  I don't believe this is a hardware problem per say, but the variables are numerous.

#3 - Remove all of the nonessential software and hardware and see if there is interference there, but it would be easier to re-load Win 7, however, that of course kicks the counter and makes my current version no longer authorized, even if I could do it.    And since it is an OEM copy from Newegg, Microsoft will not even talk to you.  But I have a LOT of different things loaded, many versions of development software, for compiling things like Truecrypt for example.  A valid concern for interference.

#4 - Load a VMWARE image that People seem to be already running this under, which might be less time overall.  But it just would confirm it is a software/OS problem or a hardware issue, which might help.

#5 - Selling it and getting a Founder version (if I could find it).  If this IS a problem with something other than the card, I will get the same issue with another 1080ti.  I don't know of anyone that has one of these - and they damn sure wouldn't loan me one to check.  And as another post says - there are plenty of People using the 1080ti for cracking - which makes me believe that because all of these other programs like memtestG80 and mfaktc-0.21 work, then it's possible that this is something else, something simple I overlooked.  Maybe a type of BIOS mode (although I have tried re-configuring the slot modes and such already) I'm not aware of.

#6 - Getting the firmware version of the card and post a request to see if anyone Else is running Hashcat with this specific card and firmware, and OS.  That actually would be of great benefit to solving this.

 - I figured the Ubuntu would be the least time intensive path at this point.  I have an ASUS z97-a mobo, which does support virtualization, so I'm going to see if the VMWARE works with the video drivers - I know the virtualization works since I have used Ubuntu before under VMWARE, I just deleted the copy unfortunately, since I was done with it.  The build for Ubuntu shouldn't take too long I wouldn't think.  I just figured if someone already had a version they KNEW worked - it would be valuable.  And maybe just a clean build will be better now that I think of it.  There seems to be enough information posted on here to put the actual step by step instructions together, including things like 7z install prior to hashcat.  If I do that I will post an ACTUAL step by step to do this - one that works.  The ones I have seen produce errors, and Noobs like me get stuck on those.

As usual, things take time to do.  And most likely I am making more work for myself.  Once I check off this path, I will weigh another.  I'm not against replacing the card, I just don't want to do it and still have the problem, so I need to know for sure this is not something else.  At this point because I have had multiple 1080ti's that produce that exact same issue, I'm guessing it's something else, or a combination.

I guess the thing is, I have time, and God gave me a pretty decent brain, and I did development for 30+ years (down to assembly, in about 35+ languages/processors) - so it's not like I don't have the ability, I just need to spend the time, like anything else.

Thanks for the thoughts - they are always helpful

B